Uploading attachments from inside directly to a cloud drive

[questorfla]

This is a question which involves a problem that to me is something I would never do anyway.  But I need to find documentation that says why even though I am pretty sure I know why it should NOT be done.
In cases where people are getting emails containing files that ware sometimes WORD docs sent through Word but sometimes Docs sent as ZIP files or PDF sent as Zip files.  There are a few people here who insist that they should be able to simply drag these out and drop them directly to a mapped CLOUD storage. folder
with No local copy, no saved to local drive.  This includes the possibility of it being a Zipped file that they open the zip while it is still in the email and then copy the contents to the cloud drive.

To my way of thinking, the problem is that sometimes it DOES work!

I have always been told that anything you are storing on a cloud storage, especially one that is a shared resource for others, anything you put there should be something you first saved to your own local system.  For one thing there is a better chance that any Viruses or malware packed into the attachment would be caught before they end up in a folder on a Cloud shared by many people who are trusting that anything put there is "clean".

But for another, since saving files to a Cloud drive requires time to upload, if you drag and drop something then close the email (or even save to: Cloud drive then close the email) I can see a lot of places where that file may not ever get uploaded and this is the situation I am trying to explain.  But I must be asking Googgle the wrong question because I cannot get a clear set of replies.

Can anyone here offer anything to this?

[superboyac]

I'm not exactly sure what the question is, but I'll try to discuss it from what I  understood.

You seem to be talking about opening emails (client software, or web client like gmail?) and saving attachments to the cloud.  And you also mention not storing or storing it first on the pc.  Well, if it's a client like Outlook, then most likely the attachment is already on your hard drive in some form or another.  It might be encrypted inside the outlook pst file, or just straight up stored in some obsucre program folder.  So whether you drag/drop it to another folder, it's already on your computer (but possibly inaccessible).

If it's a web client like gmail, the attachment is not on your computer.  You can probably save it directly to the cloud if that feature exists ( i think it does in gmail).  You might be able to save it directly to the cloud using a smartphone also, depending on the apps you are using.

I think the more common way with normal computer users is to place the file in your Dropbox or googe drive directory, which is an actual directory on your computer, and the software will sync it to the cloud.  So in that case, yes you are first saving the file on your hard drive with drag/drop or whatever.

With zip files, you should also be aware that there are middlemen temp folders used during the extraction.  So let's say you want to just open a document in the zip file through the email client...well, that has to first be extracted, and it most likely takes place in some temp directory on your hard drive.  And it may also get deleted automatically when you're done with it.

[questorfla]

Sorry.  My mistake.  When I originally posted this to MS tech-net, I had more wording in the subject but it got chopped of here so I had to reword.  This is all specific to Desktop Version of Outlook 2013 using MS exchange server.

The OST file definitely would contain the attached documents but if they were "copied" to a drive letter which is representing a Cloud Drive they actually go into an upload queue in a cached folder in your hidden folder named "ProgramData".  If there are any errors during transmission of the document to the cloud storage, normally, the client program would attempt to retry uploading the file from the original source.  If this original source is no longer present (ie: you closed that email) then it would have nothing to compare with.
Then depending on how your software is configured and what the error was, it may try a few more times before giving up and the file disappears until you open the email to try again.

Whether or not this is how it SHOULD operate is what I am trying to determine as this is in fact what happens in cases like this.